Ethernet controllers have traditionally supported a plurality of light emitting diode (LED) indicators. These indicators have generally been associated with ethernet controller cards that are plugged into personal computers utilized within the network. These LED indicators are generally utilized for diagnostics purpose to determine if the controller is functioning properly.
Accordingly, the LED indicators are utilized to determine if a controller card is transmitting, receiving, detecting collision, polarity and link status. In a typical network environment, when a signal is provided from one computer to another on a network, the other computer on the network receives this same data and the receive LED indicator on all the computers on the network will be activated.
Oftentimes, there are other reasons, that it is important for a particular computer to have an indication that a data packet is being transmitted on the network that must be processed by the particular computer. For example in some environments it is important that the power be conserved when the computers are utilized in such networks. Power management schemes are known that are utilized directly within a personal computer. A power management scheme is one that conserves power by putting the computer in a `sleep` mode allowing it to only draw enough power to maintain information in its memory. Even though the computer is on, it is almost completely inactive. This `sleep` mode can be triggered either manually or automatically, for example, when the computer remains idle for a predetermined amount of time. However, there are presently no power management schemes related to the detection of network activity or the like. Thus, whenever there are network activities on the network, all computers within the network will be turned on (or `awoke`), that is, taken out of the `sleep` mode, regardless of whether the network activities are addressed to any specific computer within the network.
Hence, there is a long-felt but unsatisfied need to provide a system for allowing a controller on a computer within a network to determine if a data packet has arrived that the computer is to process. The present invention addresses such a need.